


I'm Going To Kiss You Now

by thinkpink20



Category: The OC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkpink20/pseuds/thinkpink20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan never said, ‘I’m going to kiss you now,’ like they do in movies...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Going To Kiss You Now

Ryan never said, ‘I’m going to kiss you now,’ like they do in movies, and they weren’t at the top of a Ferris wheel or ringing in the new year but it was still pretty amazing. 

They never saved each other from mad gun men or defied their fathers, but still when Seth looks back on it he knows it was the most perfect thing he ever did. He shouldn’t feel that way, but he does.

Though they grew older together, they got distracted, and fell apart. Ryan fell right back into Marissa’s arms and Seth met Amy at college, who had bright red hair and a smile like Summer’s. 

The day Ryan got married, Seth was best man.

They stood at the alter, first Sandy, the Seth, then Ryan right in front of the priest. They all turned to look when Jimmy entered with Marissa on his arm, and there was a collective sigh of appreciation from the congregation.

Seth had to give it them, Marissa looked beautiful, though he’d never liked her, and he never would.

The day Seth got married, Ryan was best man.

The night before they stayed in together, a poor rendition of a Stag party, but Seth never really got into the beer and lap-dancers thing so they played Playstation instead. Two grown, 28 year old men playing Playstation. Ryan beat Seth, because Seth wasn’t concentrating, instead he kept thinking about that day, 11 years ago, when he handed Ryan the games controller and inadvertently asked him to be his friend, please, in that desperate way he’d been doing with people since he was 3 years old. Ryan was the only one who ever took him up on the offer.

Eventually Ryan went home, next door, to be with Marissa, and Seth slept in the pool house, for old time’s sake. If it was going to be his last night at home, he wanted it to be in the bed he had the most fond memories of. His parents didn’t say anything, his mom just cried that she was finally loosing her baby, and her dad patted him on the back, acting all re-assuringly masculine.

Seth cried that night too, into the pillow that used to be Ryan’s, and still smelled like him, if you buried yourself long enough.

The day Marissa first went into labour, Seth was working from home and the phone rang. It was Ryan calling from the office, voice breathless like he was running around, picking things up. He told Seth to ‘just be there’, and Seth was.

The first time Seth held Ryan’s child he bit back his tears not to cry, and Amy laughed in the background, saying she was getting broody, then her and Marissa planned baby names for the rest of the day. Ryan just kept checking his little girl, straightening her blanket or smoothing her fine wisps of blonde hair. He looked amazed, like a man who got a second chance, and Seth spent most of that night awake, watching the ceiling while his wife snored lightly beside him.

After that Amy kept finding excuses to drag him to bed, in the middle of the afternoon, as he was getting ready for work, when he popped home to pick up files. She would kiss him and work her fingers on the button of his trousers and whisper things about cycles and ovulation, which made Seth think of clinical diagrams of wombs in doctors waiting rooms, but he would undress her all the same. 

As he put his clothes back on, she would put her feet up against the wall, because she said it helped, and he’d leave so he didn’t have to watch.

The first time Amy miscarried; Seth was eating dinner with his mom in The Lighthouse. He was slicing his steak when the cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he considered ignoring it, but then pulled it out with an apologetic look at Kirsten.

Amy was sobbing into the phone and he couldn’t hear her words for tears. She was inconsolable when he got home, and Marissa didn’t come around with Molly for at least three weeks. Ryan tip-toed around Seth like a dying man, and Seth wanted to scream, but instead he nodded, and pretended like his heart was breaking.

Which it was, in a way, but after 10 years of your heart breaking a little every day, you hardly feel it.

The first time Seth spent a Chrismukkah alone, he was in Chino. He argued with Amy at the beginning of Hanukkah and the lack of voices in the house was killing him so he got out. He got in the car and found himself on the 101, with Journey playing on a cracked CD from years ago. It wasn’t like there was anything for him in Chino, but he wanted to be near Ryan and that felt like the only way. He could have stayed at home of course, and gone to the Chrismukkah party, but Marissa would have been there too, swollen belly and glowing smile, hair shining in the Christmas tree lights. She would have been bouncing Molly on her knee and Ryan would have been fussing over them, so he wouldn’t really have been near him, not mentally anyway.

In a run-down motel in Chino, with paint peeling off the walls, yellow stains on the ceilings and the noise of a couple having loud sex in the next room, Seth spent Christmas Day getting hideously drunk and watching his cell phone buzz in the corner.

He had 27 missed calls. 9 from his mom, 5 from his dad, 1 from Marissa and 12 from Amy.

None from Ryan.

The first and only time Seth left Newport for good, he signed his divorce papers in the drivers seat of his car and slipped them in the nearest post box.

As he drove away, he spent the entire time looking in the rear view mirror.


End file.
